2
Chu Lai
January - February 1967
The deuce and a half drove through the opened gate and came to a stop in front of the Administration tent, known as S-1. I threw my duffel bag off the back and then jumped down next to it. The other seven marines onboard quickly followed, and within seconds we were all calf-high deep in mud. My utilities, once starched and bloused at the ankles, and my boots, just two days ago spit-shined, were now totally covered in a black claylike muck. All of us stood a good twelve inches deep in the gumbo, as helpless as an upside-down armadillo.
The heavy rain continued. Buckets of water fell from the sky, our only shelter, the S-1 tent, appeared ominously before us. I lifted my duffel bag -- now a good five pounds heavier covered with mud and dripping wet -- over my right shoulder. I was leading the group of us hobbling across the thirty or so yards of black slop, then up the four wooden steps to the entrance of the S-1 office. Slightly off balance, I pushed the green tarp away that protected the screen door from the rain. Instantly I was drenched by the water escaping from the folded sections of tarp no longer tucked in above the door. I couldn’t get any wetter or more pathetic looking if I had tried. Sitting behind a green metal desk in front of me as I entered was an office pinkie (marine slang for typist).
“PFC. Larry Rubenstein reporting for duty, sir!” I announced. My voice was somewhat muffled by the other seven marines simultaneously slamming the screen door and dropping their duffel bags to the floor. All of us were eager to escape the torrential downpour.
I couldn’t tell his rank right off, the only significant evidence being a wooden nameplate on his desk engraved “Lance Corporal Brian Hanson.” He was just one rank above me and apparently the only one in the office. I felt completely foolish calling him sir. He was a good-looking young man, tall, blond, and clean-cut. He wore a white T-shirt with green utility pants and camouflaged boots. His dog tags hung outside his shirt, clearly visible. He looked up startled and in mock disbelief. He was typing hunt-and-peck on someone's files when the barrage of soaking-wet replacements stormed in. He took charge, politely and straightforwardly gathering our orders that we had hand carried from Camp Pendleton, and in one neat pile took them to a small private office at the back of the tent.
The nameplate mounted at eye level on the door at the rear of the tent read “Capt. James Fischer, H&S Company Commander.” The lance corporal returned in a couple of minutes and informed our group of new recruits that two others and I were to stay there, at Headquarters & Service Company. The other five were to move on farther into the unknown. They were 0311s -- pure grunt infantry. They would spend the night at an H&S transit tent, be issued their gear with everyone else, then move on to Foxtrot Company, Fox Company for short, one of the four rifle companies that made up 2/7. Everyone in the marines gets a military occupational specialty, an MOS, such as 0311, upon graduation from boot camp. My MOS, 0351, made me what's called a specialist in anti-tank assault weapons. I had completed an additional two weeks of infantry training at Camp Lejeune, specializing in bazookas, flamethrowers, and the 106mm recoilless rifle.2 Although I knew three days before graduating that I was going to Nam, I never had a clue as to what I’d be doing there. Why, I wondered, would they want anti-tank assault in Vietnam? The Vietcong didn’t have any tanks.
H&S Company was a mud hole consisting of thirty or so sprawling tents situated about thirty miles southwest of Chu Lai. The small rolling hills were leveled by a series of flat sections carved out by bulldozers from the Corps of Engineers. On the next to the highest level where I stood were the four tents that made up the S-1 (Administration), S-2 (Intelligence), S-3 (Operations), and S-4 (Communications) sections. There was only one level higher than the S sections and it overlooked the entire base. The two tents on that level were the offices and living quarters of our commanding officer, Lt.Col. W. P. Kitterman, and his executive officer, Maj. Jack Swindler.
It didn’t take long to get processed, and within minutes I was directed downhill and told to report to the platoon sergeant, John Mitchell, noncommissioned officer (NCO) for the 0351s. Carrying fifty pounds of gear, I wasn’t moving very fast; my head was nestled as close to my shoulders as it could get. I couldn’t get any wetter. Being a 0351 never did appeal to me. Boot camp, infantry training, thirty days’ leave, jungle warfare school, and now Nam. I knew going in with only a two-year enlistment, they weren’t going to spend too much time training me. Still, I had a need to prove something to myself, and maybe my family. College hadn’t gone well, and most of my friends had enlisted in the marines right from high school. Knowing that the Marine Corps didn't take smarts, only heart, in that department I felt I was as good as anyone, maybe better than most.
* * *
My first day was wet, dirty, and confusing. Sgt. Mitchell seemed all right, laid- back and happy to be going home in less than thirty days. He was “so short” -- that's what you called yourself after you were there nine months or more and counting down until you rotated back to the world. Sgt. Mitchell was so short; he didn’t do much of anything anymore. Our platoon was now actually run by three corporals, Cpl. Chris Anderson, Cpl. Charles Moore, and Cpl. Young Chai, each with two, three, and four months left, respectively, before they also would rotate home. The platoon was undersized, with Sgt. Mitchell, the three corporals, and twelve riflemen; a standard 0351 platoon usually had eighteen riflemen plus six rocket launcher men.
Vietnam was unlike any war the United States had fought before; we weren’t there for the duration, because there was no real beginning or ending -- it just went on continually. All the other branches of service did a twelve-month tour of duty. The marines did thirteen, always having to be tougher than everyone else, always trying to do the job with less equipment and a lower budget.
When I reached the tent to report to Sgt. Mitchell, the three corporals, and two others were seated at a portable card table playing poker at the far end of what was apparently our storage tent. A couple of other guys were hanging out watching the play. The game was a daily ritual and continued nonstop. Mitchell and Anderson were regular players, and the rest of the guys rotated in or out, depending on their finances and courage, as I later found out. The tent was crowded with field gear and equipment stacked randomly about at the opposite end: flamethrowers, fifty-gallon drums of napalm, gasoline, and loosely stacked opened and unopened cases of C-rations. Sgt. Mitchell took a second out of his game. They were playing five-card draw with a progressive pot, one-eyed jacks, and the king with the axe were wild. He shouted out to L.Cpl. Joe Garcia, propped up by the outside corner edge of the tent, just barely covered by the overhead tarp to be protected from the rain. Garcia was leaning there smoking a cigarette.
“Hey, Garcia. Show this new guy to a tent and get him squared away.”
Garcia, not in the least bit interested in moving, responded with his thick Mexican accent. “In a minute, Sarge, I’m busy.”
Mitchell shook his head and put his cards down, saying in a whisper what could only be heard by the other players and myself standing next to him.
“Why do I put up with this shit?”
When he stood up, Mitchell was over six feet tall. He had a lanky build, and his face and arms were deeply tanned. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and with a listless stance he looked at me for the first time and said in that distinct southern drawl I heard so often at Camp Lejeune, “Follow me, son.”
Once again with my duffel bag over my shoulder, I walked back into the rain and mud. Mitchell took me to the farthest tent, which was nestled up against the hillside. This tent and the two next to it were used as enlisted men's quarters. The front of Tent 3 and its two long sides were exposed to the camp, the back only a couple of feet from a line of sandbags piled about four and a half feet tall. The 0351 platoon consisted of four tents. Three were living quarters; the other housed the equipment and the poker game. A little more eager now, I ran up the steps onto the plywood floor of my new quarters.
Sgt. Mitchell entering behind me wiped the rain from his eyes. “Pick an empty cot and get settled in.”
I dropped my duffel bag on the floor next to the farthest available cot on the left side and looked around. The tent was about two-thirds full -- seven cots in all, four on my side and two on the other, plus one in an enclosed oversized area. Homemade wooden shelving separated each man’s private space. Like all the other tents, this one was no different, made from two-by-fours with a plywood floor and suspended off the ground on posts to get above the water and mud. An eight-man green canvas tent was thrown loosely over the frame. The sides were tied to the floor or folded up, depending on the season. Bugs, scorpions, and mosquitoes came and went at their leisure.
Sgt. Eric Levery emerged from an enclosed area on the right, his space, for only a moment to greet us. He acknowledged Sgt. Mitchell with a nod, and then glanced at me with a sour expression that seemed to say I wasn’t important enough for him to waste his time on. Sgt. Levery wasn’t a 0351 but was housed there anyway and occupied enough space for three people. He had walled off his corner with mosquito netting and a door, which made it difficult to see through and gave him a sense of privacy. It didn’t take long to also learn that Sgt. Levery was a lifer, an E-5 buck sergeant, the lowest grade of sergeant, with more than six years in that rank and waiting for his first staff promotion. He was actually a 0341 platoon sergeant for the mortar platoon but didn’t want to bunk alongside his men and wasn’t a high enough rank to be housed with the staff NCOs. He was arrogant, with a nasty demeanor, and didn’t like living with enlisted men on their first tour of duty. It didn’t take long to find out that everyone wanted him promoted so that he’d get the hell out of this tent and leave the rest of us alone. Levery went back to his cot to read while I continued to familiarize myself with the sleeping quarters.
With the exception of Sgt. Levery’s private corner, three of the remaining cots were empty; the others were occupied but vacant. The bunks, or racks, as they are also called, were just bare fold-up cots with wooden supports. The occupied ones had a half-inflated rubber mattress lying across their canvass top.
Directly opposite me was where L.Cpl. Ernest Richardson slept. I knew that because he proudly displayed a wall calendar with his name written above it, a simple square piece of cardboard made from an old C-rations box. The cardboard edges were frayed, and he had written with a black marker the words “L.Cpl. Ernest Richardson, Fighter by day, Lover by night, Drunker by choice, marine by mistake.” The calendar had numbers instead of dates. The numbers counted down. January began with 167. Black X’s were drawn through each day until the present date, January 19, displayed only 149 days left for Richardson. Under the calendar, “Getting Short” was written. On both sides of the calendar were pictures of Playboy centerfolds, July, August, and September knockdown, drop-dead gorgeous women with exposed breasts and only G-strings covering their perfect bodies. Richardson slept under mosquito netting.
Adjacent to Richardson’s space was another cot. On the other side of it and leaning against the wall was a small table supporting a brand-new Sony reel-to-reel tape player covered in clear plastic that was protecting it from the dust -- obviously someone’s treasured possession. Next to the cot was a blue-, yellow-, and red-striped folding nylon beach chair.
By the time I had taken all this in, Sgt. Mitchell, annoyed that he had wasted his precious time on me and missed at least four or five poker hands, was gone. I didn’t return to the poker table until that evening. Meanwhile, Sgt. Levery told me to separate my gear into what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to store. Then he directed me to Supply to pick up my new 782 jungle gear.
Finding Supply was easy enough. The rain had let up and wasn’t half as bad. A light breeze from the ocean had cooled the humidity and began to make for a pleasant afternoon. Supply for our entire battalion consisted of only two tents, each having locked wooden doors. One tent was an office and stored the clothing and C-rations. The other was for weapons: M-14s, .45 caliber pistols, a variety of ammo, hand grenades, and C-4 explosives. With the exception of my utilities, T-shirts, socks, and one set of tropicals, or “trops” -- the only stateside uniform we kept in Vietnam, a tan lightweight short-sleeved uniform that didn’t require a tie -- everything else would be issued to me here. My other uniforms would be sent on to Okinawa and stored until I picked them up on my way home in thirteen months. Either that or they’d get shipped home with the body bag. Those were the only two options.
Cpl. Gene Robertson at Supply walked me through piles of clothing, handing me mediums without asking. I was issued two pairs of jungle utilities -- a much lighter version than the day-to-day work clothes issued in the States; four pairs of green socks, two green T-shirts; one pair of jungle boots, black leather with green camouflaged canvas sides; a flack jacket, back pack, a canteen; a poncho cover; a rubber lady -- my air mattress; a helmet; an entrenching tool; a rifle belt; a first-aid pack; and a K-bar. The K-bar is a large knife with a black wooden handle and resembles a bowie knife straight from the Alamo.
From the second tent I collected four magazines, eighty rounds of ammo, and an M-14 rifle. The rifle was thrown to me in the correct, smart military manner. I immediately checked it to make sure it wasn’t loaded. I looked to see that a magazine wasn’t inserted, then flipped it right side up, pulled back the bolt release mechanism, and inserted my right pinkie into the chamber to confirm that a round wasn’t lodged. Completely certain that the weapon was empty, I looked at the serial number I’d have to memorize, then leaned the weapon on the floor against my stack of gear. The next hour was spent at the Supply corporal’s desk, filling out paperwork to please the green machine.
It was during this time that the Supply corporal told me that a portion of my 0351 platoon was always on rotation with our rifle companies. Each of our four rifle companies had at least two 0351s assigned to them, typically manning a 106mm recoilless rifle mounted to a Mule.3
Not far from Supply was a small overlook facing a sunken ravine about fifty yards long. It had a solid wall of vegetation behind it. Cpl. Robertson said it was our firing range and that I could use it to test my weapon. All alone now, I spent the rest of the day sighting in and testing my M-14. I thought about the rifle range at boot camp. That was probably my only pleasant experience at Paris Island. I graduated from boot camp as a sharpshooter and could proudly wear the badge of crossed rifles on my uniform. In boot camp we qualified at one hundred, three hundred, and five hundred yards, respectively. Now, firing at a shallow fifty yards, repeatedly adjusting my sight and firing, I could easily shoot the wings off a fly. My M-14 had a wooden stock, and its hefty weight made it feel remarkably dependable -- my first small sense of security since landing in Da Nang three days earlier.
I started the walk back to my quarters and began drifting off in thought when I caught myself scratching my arms and legs. The mosquitoes were beginning to take their toll. I realized then I was already bitten and had open sores over two-thirds of my body. It felt solitary and desolate on the walk back to my tent. This feeling wasn’t necessarily how one normally thinks of loneliness. It wasn’t in a bad way, but in a way where you reach into yourself and find security in the things that matter. I knew I could count on myself and on my weapon. I thought about my family, my friends, the good times, the local hometown bars, and driving my car. Back home I had a white ’63 Chevy Nova, which I shared with my mom. I hadn’t met any friends here yet. In Pendleton, at jungle warfare school, they actually told us not to make friends. What they said was, “You don’t want to be put in a position where you have to risk your life to save a buddy.”
They told us a lot of stuff in jungle warfare school; the hard part was separating the truth from the crap. I couldn’t imagine friends as not being something good. Friends were something that never came easy for me. I expected a lot from people, maybe too much. The few good friends I had from high school I knew would be life-long.
Hicksville was a tough town to grow up in. Our school was divided between the hoods and the surfers. My friends and I were hoods. There were very few other Jews in Hicksville; most of the kids were Italians or Irish. The Italians were the fighters -- fast with their hands and faster with their mouths. Where I grew up, if you got into a fight, your friends would lay down their life for you, not out of love, but out of pride. Part of the reason I enlisted was to be close to my buddies. Two of my best friends from Mr. Gagliardo’s drafting class were already in Nam. They had arrived about three months before me. Rick O’Neil and Bob Huether were both marines, crew chiefs on choppers, based at Mag-16 (Marine Aircraft Group), Marble Mountain, south of Da Nang. Bob Eggerman, another friend from high school, joined the navy because he thought he wouldn’t have to go to Nam. It’s kind of funny, though; he was there on his second tour, assigned to a swift boat, patrolling the rivers outside of Da Nang. I think over two-thirds of the guys in my graduating class were somewhere in Vietnam at this time.
It was late afternoon, and walking toward my platoon took me along several narrow paths. The rain had finally stopped, but the trail was still deep with mud and very slippery. If someone had approached from the opposite direction or came up behind me, one of us would have had to step off the trail. Yet to my left was a steep ridge, and to my right was a drop-off into a densely vegetated gully. Thankfully, no one came. I was alone overlooking the shower stalls and the mess hall, trying to familiarize myself with the camp’s layout. I tried to guess where the water came from for the showers, but the constant humming of the twin generators gave no doubt where our electricity was born. All electrical power came from two gas-fed generators adjacent to Supply and isolated as best as they could be. They were the light and life of 2/7.
My thoughts turned serious, and the fact that I could die there became quite real. The notion that I might never return home, my body possibly never found or blown to bits somewhere on the other side of the world, was almost more than I could bear. I could already sense that the rules of society had changed. In fact, there no longer were any rules, and very few precedents. How could I keep alive for thirteen months? That was the question I had to answer. I knew so little about what was going on around me, and I could already sense I wouldn’t be getting much help from my platoon.
* * *
During the first week I got to know L.Cpl. Richardson and Cpl. Chai, the two bunkmates near me. I was assigned to Squad 3 and Chai was my squad leader. He became very helpful in answering my questions. Chai was half-Korean, short, about five foot seven, with a stocky, powerful build. He face was handsome, and his skin had only a slight trace of olive. Chai had one-hundred-plus days left before rotating. He treated me like I was his replacement; I gave him evidence that he really was going home. L.Cpl. Richardson, assigned to Squad 3, was okay -- just a little more removed and kept to himself.
The tape player belonged to Chai, who told me that he bought it in Hong Kong on R&R. He played his collection of rock ’n’ roll tapes at night, just before we crashed. Most of them were prerecorded from the morning’s armed service’s radio station. There was one station that aired from 0600 to 1000 hours and played rock ’n’ roll. After that it was poker, classical music, a little jazz, and banjos to get you by. The morning station had this sexy female voice, Saigon Sally, screaming, “Good Morning, Vietnam!”4
My daily assignments turned out to be the mundane task of filling sandbags. As the new guy, I got the worst duty. My only luck so far was I hadn’t been assigned to cleaning the outhouses. That was also on the daily roster. Every day I filled sandbags from breakfast till noon, took an hour off for lunch, maybe a quick nap, then it was back to sandbags, two men to a team — one held, the other filled. We switched roles on and off over the course of the day. For three days my partners had been John Hayes and Henry Watkins, both blacks, “splives,” as they liked to call themselves. About a quarter of H&S Company was black; that ratio grew to about a third in our outlying rifle companies.
The bags, weighing about fifty pounds when full, were just simple burlap
sacks. Nearly everything at this camp was made out of sandbags for protection from incoming mortar fire. The structures we slept in, the mess hall, the small PX. The Operations tents were made entirely from sandbags, including the roof of the structure. Around the perimeter of the base, the bunkers used for guard duty at night, or hole watch, as it was called, were also made from sandbags. Each perimeter bunker was spaced approximately fifty yards apart and held two men. Hole watch was from 1800 to 0600 hours. In that twelve-hour shift, each man slept for three hours then had watch for three hours. Every fourth or fifth bunker had an M-60 machine gun that rotated randomly so as to not make its location easily known. Everything I had learned so far was from either my sandbag partner or overhearing the scuttlebutt at the mess hall, and maybe a little from watching the endless poker game.
It was on my fourth day when my name first appeared on the roster for hole watch. Sgt. Mitchell, while waiting for the cards to be shuffled, casually informed me to report thirty minutes early for hole watch. Because it was my first time, I had to report to the sergeant of the guard for a briefing. There was a tent with two cots next to the entry gate for the nightly appointed corporal and sergeant of the guard. This is where we got assigned a hole watch partner and were taken to the bunkers. Two of us reported early; we were the only two who had never stood watch before. I was very green, having 379 days to go and counting. S.Sgt. Jake Polaski from the S-4 section, that night’s sergeant of the guard, matter-of-factly recited the rules:
“One: You fall asleep during your watch and I’ll nail your ass to the wall
it’s a court-martial offense.
“Two: You can fire your weapon at anything in front of you that moves
between dark and dawn. The Vietnamese have a curfew. Any Vietnamese out after dark is considered Vietcong. Don’t wound them; kill them. A wounded gook will claim he is innocent, not a Vietcong at all. A dead Vietnamese is the enemy --no questions asked.
“Three: The enemy — gooks, Charlie, those rice-propelled bastards –
they’re either NVAs (North Vietnam Army soldiers) or Vietcong, Vietnamese loyal to the North. You can always tell the difference. The NVA wear uniforms, carry AK-47s, and are a real army, a foe to be reckoned with. The Vietcong are volunteers, part-timers, farmers, and shopkeepers during the day, V.C. at night. Men, women, or children -- it doesn’t matter don’t hesitate. You can be killed just as dead from a six-year-old little girl as you can from a twenty-one-year-old man. Don’t trust any of them. At night they go out as snipers or lay booby traps, or sometimes simply stay home and carve pongee sticks in front of their TV.” He laughed at his own joke and went on. “You’ve seen pongees before -- those long bamboo poles, razor sharp at one end? Here they cover those pointed ends with shit. If the pongee stick doesn’t kill you, the infection will. They’ll steal any type of round or weapon from the U.S. military and make a booby trap out of them. Their current favorite is the Bouncing Betty, a little device that when stepped on shoots up about three feet before exploding, just about at groin level. Russian made. It doesn’t usually kill you outright, but takes your balls and both your legs to Bye-Bye land. The Vietcong would actually prefer if you didn’t die. A wounded marine will slow down the entire outfit, and besides, they get to send you home a cripple for the whole world to see.”
The sergeant rambled on. I didn’t know what to think -- he was telling me a lot of things all at once, and you don’t interrupt a staff sergeant when he’s talking. Hole watch was new to me, and I couldn’t help but think I was in way over my head. How often did this place get attacked anyway?
“Four: Two patrols go out every night in five-man squads. They leave from
holes six and nine. They should return the same way. Tonight's password,” he paused, looking down at a sheet of paper, “is ‘tomato. When a patrol returns, be careful. Sometimes they get lost and don’t come in quite where they’re supposed to. They should re-enter the perimeter the same way they leave. Don’t forget what you were taught in infantry training. Shout, ‘Who goes there?’ They, in turn, give the password ‘Tomato,’ and your response is, ‘Approach to be recognized.’
“Five: On a final note, if you get a confirmed kill, that’s an immediate field
promotion of one rank. Oh, yeah -- don’t shoot their water buffalos, that’s a fifty-dollar fine.”
By the time S.Sgt. Polaski finished talking, I had absorbed only about fifty
percent of what he said. I hoped it was enough. The rest of the detail had already left when I was told to report to Hole 4.
“Don’t do anything fucking stupid, okay?” Polaski shouted as I was walking
out the door.
Cpl. James Cook, the corporal of the guard, was outside waiting for us when we stepped out of the tent. He stated he would come around twice before the night was over to check on things. We walked the perimeter together and passed Holes 1 to 3 before reaching Hole 4, my stop. Hole 4 faced north, about two hundred meters from Hole 1, which guarded the road and entrance to our camp. It was the only bunker manned twenty-four hours a day -- during the day by MPs and at night by grunts. Sitting on top of Hole 4 waiting for me, smiling, was the tall blond-headed office pinkie I met when I first arrived.
“Hey, Rube, how you doing, man? I’m Brian Hanson, remember me from S-1?” he said, as he extended his right hand to shake. With that simple introduction I met my first real friend and got my nickname, Rube, which I carried from that day forward. We flipped coins for choice of watch; I chose tails and won, and picked first watch.
It was just past 1800 and I new I wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while, if at all. Brian didn’t feel like sleeping either, so we both hung out, sitting on the sandbags, shooting the breeze. I had so many questions about what really went on at H&S, but we spent most of our time reminiscing about our good times back home. Brian was from Los Angeles and had been in Nam since October. He had enlisted in the marines for four years in the hope of saving up enough money for college. He was assigned to office administration immediately after infantry training.
Regardless of MOS, all marines are first considered infantrymen. Every cook, office pinkie, or supply personnel are trained to be part of a rifle company prior to any additional training or education he may receive. Typing was a marketable skill in Vietnam, and it could keep you in an office job and out of the boondocks for your entire tour.
Brian and I liked each other right off, both of us being easy-going, fairly intelligent, and so far could go three or four sentences without using the word fuck as an adjective. We both had a bit of college, but most important, neither of us was too gung ho. The Marine Corps was something you did to fill your military obligation and then get out. It was a proving ground, a well-needed pause in your life to mature and figure out what you really wanted to do.
Brian knew everything that was going on at 2/7. Not only had he been around for three months, but he handled everyone's records. He could easily pull any file and look up someone’s proficiency and conduct grades. He knew what formulas were used for promotions, when you could get R & R, and where you could go. R & R was five days off after six months in country, and you could choose from Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, or Sydney. If married, you could select Hawaii and get seven days off to meet with your family. But Brian said that no one went to Hawaii because it was too hard to come back afterward. He worked directly with Cpt. Fischer, the company commander for H&S, and was privy to the many conversations and all the chewing-outs that took place in Fischer’s office. He never went on any operations unless they were full battalion-size operations, in which case everyone went. He did pull his share of hole watch, though, about once a week, and field patrols — search and destroy missions, also known as snoop n’ poops -- about twice a month. Quite a few less than I’d be getting, he told me.
Brian explained that the only grunts at H&S Company were in the 0351 and 0341 platoons. The other grunts, the 0331s (machine gunners), were divided up between our rifle companies, Echo, Fox, Golf, and Hotel. Basic riflemen were 0311s. The rifle companies were located about three to ten miles farther out to the west and north. Beyond that, the bush, there were no other U.S. forces. For every combat marine, there were seven others for support, and no one was farther out than we were. The only luck we had was we were pretty far south; the worse fighting took place up north at the demilitarized zone.
Brian told me I’d catch minesweeping details about three times a month. The 7th Marines Regiment provided two sweepers for each of the four roads going to our rifle companies. We, in turn, provided four riflemen to back them up. Every morning starting at 0500, the roads from H&S Company to all of the rifle companies had to be secured for the day. To the east was the 7th Marines Regiment, our first line of backup. The regiment had our artillery, the minesweepers, reconnaissance, snipers, but most of all a better commissary -- the PX — and the Enlisted Club.
“It’s illegal, but every once in a while, if I know the guys who are posted at
the gate, I’ll run down there for a couple of hours,” Brian said. “Their beer is always cold, and they even have a slot machine in the club,” he said almost euphorically.
“Count me in next time,” I told him.
He smiled. “It’s easy; it’s just outside the gate and about a half-mile down
the road.”
To the northeast was the village of Nuc Mon. Nuc Mon had its own ARVN platoon in the center of town. Stationed with the ARVNs were a few advisers from our S-2 section. Brian’s opinion was not to have too much faith in the ARVNs.
“They’ve been fighting for too long, since the French were here twenty-
some-odd years ago,” he explained. “Their heart isn’t in it anymore. Too many South Vietnamese have already died, and the living have never experienced peace in their lifetime.”
A sad way to grow up, I thought to myself.
“They’ll join us during operations; all operations are combined operations,
but you can’t count on them,” Brian continued. “They’ll run rather than fight, and who really knows which side they’re on? I don’t. This is a part-time war. The gooks — they do our laundry, cut our hair, plow the fields, sell us our own Coca-Cola during the day, and then at night they’re the enemy.”
While Brian was talking I was listening but also looking around before the dusk turned to darkness. Directly in front of me was a cleared field about fifty meters deep. Three lines of curled Constantine barbed wire created the final boundary between the rice patties and us; beyond that, the jungle. The many quadrants of land that made up the farms from the village of Nuc Mon were empting, the farmers heading home. In a short time, I’d hardly be able to see anything and Brian would be asleep. I felt the weight of responsibility heavy on my shoulders. My life and that of someone else's would soon be in my hands.
In the tranquility of dusk I thought about the rice patties in front of me. For the Vietnamese, it was their staple of life. Four sections of land were cultivated by the family of a single farmer, each section about the size of a football field, dug out so that they were recessed in the ground with an earthen wall about three feet tall separating them. The wall, a foot or so wide, was also used as a path by the farmers to tend to their work. Usually there was only one farmer, or maybe one with a young son or two -- wearing the typical black pajamas, carrying bamboo poles hung from their shoulders with two thatched baskets, one on each end, made from leaves. The baskets moved water from one field to the next. Of the four fields, one was usually just dirt with young seedlings; two others were green with the rice plants growing at different stages. The remaining field was completely covered with water, and nothing could be seen beneath it. The farmer and his children would spend the entire day filling their baskets with this murky water then throwing the water over the wall to the adjacent patty. Over the course of a season all four fields would get totally submerged, one at a time. The farmer’s sons would soon get drafted or abducted into the ARVN or become a V.C., depending on the political belief of their family or the village elders. Either way, only a few would ever survive and grow old.
I had never seen a race of people so close to the earth; their patience and humility was truly admirable. There was practically no trash anywhere, and what there was came from us. The Vietnamese used everything. Trash was their basic building material. I tried to imagine how the Vietcong would choose to attack us, possibly storming across the fields, though a full frontal charge would be ridiculous. They could never get over the barbed wire with all our machine guns -- it would be a slaughter. Just one or two would try to sneak in; that was my guess. So I’d have to stay very alert.
We could hear a movie playing over the loud speaker at the Enlisted Club -- there was a small portable screen and a sixteen-millimeter projector. In front of the screen were six or so lines of makeshift wooden benches. The evening’s feature was Combat, a TV series my family and I used to watch. We could also hear the voices from Hole 5 to our left. It felt reassuring to know others were there. Brian was now sitting on the grass, leaning against the outside of the bunker. Although he was still awake, his eyes were shut and the energy he had shown when I first walked up was gone. I could tell it was going to be a long night.
The blackness that I expected never came. The moon was only a slight sliver in the sky, but the stars lit up the evening like a Christmas tree. I could see fairly clearly for at least fifty yards; after that, dark shadows turned into infinity. Gazing across the fields before me was the same as looking up into the sky. It was endless. I began a rhythm of watching from left to right and right to left, slowly, searching for movement, listening for any sound. I can’t say it was quiet. The insects of the night were intense. But movement is a different sound, and someone trying to be quiet while moving is still another sound. I repeated my motions, waiting . . . waiting. Brian was asleep now, and I was completely wide awake. After a couple of hours or so, I, too, began to feel sleepy and thought I might be missing something. So I changed my rhythm. I no longer kept repeating the left-to-right eye movements. I stood up and walked a little around the bunker, back and forth, anything to stay awake. I looked up at the sky, trying to find familiar constellations. I had loved astronomy as a child. Herbie Sawyer and I would spend endless hours looking through my 150-power refractor telescope. We’d search for planets and knew the names of all the closest stars. We even found a nebular galaxy by accident, just below Orion's Belt.
My first watch was over in several minutes, and Brian was still asleep next to the bunker. No one usually went into the bunker unless it was raining. One’s vision from inside was constricted to a small slot at each wall. The bunker also trapped the heat. Outside at night the temperature was in the low seventies; the bunker was at least a good eight to ten degrees warmer.
I touched Brian’s arm and rocked him slightly. He jumped, startled, and abruptly grabbed for his weapon.
“Its okay, it’s okay, I said, firmly but quietly. It’s your watch.”
Brian, awake now, understood. I eventually found the same spot he had found on the grass, lay down, and closed my eyes. It was impossible to sleep. I even found myself sitting up every ten minutes or so to check on him. I wanted to make sure he was awake and watching.
The night continued like this, uneventful, until around 0530, Brian’s last watch. I was asleep when Hole 5 opened fire. The sound of a single round, “Bam!” followed by another, and then still a third rang out loud and clear, outgoing from Hole 5. My head cleared fast, my weapon already in hand aimed at the rice patties before my eyes could adjust. When I did focus, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The jerk to my left, in Hole 5, was firing at a Vietnamese farmer following a wooden plow being pulled by his water buffalo. He fired again just ten feet or so behind the farmer, then one more round a bit closer. I could hear him laughing with his buddy. What stupidity, just playing, trying to scare the man because he could get away with it. Yet it was “legal”; he could shoot at anything that moved until 0600. What was truly amazing was not the marine but the farmer. Sure, he was out earlier than he was supposed to be, based on our rules dictated to him. He was just trying to get an early start on the fields before the intense heat of the day. The sun was barely coming up, and the shots from Hole 5 hadn’t fazed him one bit. He just continued to plow, ignoring the rounds landing only a few feet behind him. He didn’t even glance at the marine shooting at him. He continued plowing his field as if we never existed.
* * *
There was no time off after hole watch; maybe you could sleep in if your squad leader or platoon sergeant was kind. If not, muster was at 0730 to get the daily work assignments. In fact, there hardly ever were any days off. In Vietnam we worked seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. But as they told us, we got paid when we slept, twelve and a half cents an hour. My PFC salary, including combat pay, was $128 a month.
I felt so lost, like being thrown into a rat’s maze. There hadn’t been any lectures or battalion musters to give us an overview of what was going on. I had no direction. Whatever I knew, and believe me it was very little, was from observation and heresy. It was easy to see that there wasn’t much discipline in Nam, at least not here at 2/7, not like in the States.
Revelry was at 0600 and it was a recorded bugle on the P.A. system. Nobody cared if you shit, showered, or shaved, just as long as you reported for the daily posted assignment. In my case, the assignment roster was a handwritten sheet of paper clipped to the side of the poker room tent. No one wore clean or starched utilities, and boots were lucky to see polish in their lifetime. But the best part was, they didn’t mess with you. Back in the States there were so many kinds of inspections, I couldn’t even name them all. The one I hated with a passion was the “junk on the bunk.” You started first by making your bed, hospital corners, sheets and blanket so tight a quarter would bounce on it. Then every article of clothing issued to you was cleaned, pressed, folded perfectly in the exact place as shown in the manual, everything -- boots spit-shined, belt buckles glistening so you could see your reflection in them. In Vietnam, there were no inspections of any kind, not at 2/7; in a combat zone no one bothered you with petty shit. It wasn’t unheard of for an asshole second lieutenant to catch a bullet in the back of his head during a firefight because he screwed over one of his men for some utterly insane reason. You did what you wanted: You got up, showered if you were willing to walk the one hundred and fifty meters or so in flip-flops, wearing only a towel and carrying your weapon. If you didn’t want to shower for a month, that was your business.
Breakfast was at the mess hall any time it was open, and if it wasn’t open, you’d just go around back to the kitchen — someone was always on KP or prepping. If the mess sergeant was there, the gunny we called him, GySgt. Ervie Anderson, he’d cook for his men anytime. Of course, you had to be able to stand his cooking. Breakfast was usually some egg by-product made from what tasted like petroleum. Aside from water the only beverages were coffee and Kool-Aid. Lunch was commonly grilled cheese sandwiches made from the same stuff the eggs came from. Dinner was good, but everything, even the meats, came from cans. Nothing was fresh; nothing bought from any local markets, not in Saigon, not it Chu Lai, not in Da Nang. The cans were shipped across the ocean and had so many preservatives in them they’d last well into the twenty-first century. The hardest part for me was getting used to not having any milk. Back home in the real world, I drank milk with every meal. Other than that, the only mandatory rule was that you had to have your weapon -- safety on, locked, and loaded -- at your side everywhere you went.
* * *
It wasn’t long before I learned what flamethrowers were used for. One morning after chow, instead of filling sandbags, my outfit was told to mix napalm. In a large fifty-gallon drum, each squad slowly poured in gasoline while simultaneously stirring in a sawdust-like powder called napalm. Similar to Jell-O hardening, the mixture slowly began to get thick and sticky. It took almost an hour to make enough napalm to last all morning. When completed, six flame-throwers were filled. Flamethrowers have twin tanks that are carried by a harness on one’s back, very much like those on scuba divers. When filled, our tanks, hose, and gun weighed close to 110 pounds. Each gun carried in our hands was about thirty inches long and had six matches around the mouth of the gun. There were two triggers: One lit the match, and the other forced the compressed napalm to escape. If fired nonstop, a flamethrower lasted about three minutes. The distance a flamethrower can reach depends totally on the thickness of the mixture. My squad leader, Cpl. Chai, knew what he was doing. The tanks on my back would shoot a good forty to fifty yards in a very confined spray -- much smaller than a garden hose shooting water.
We marched outside the entry gate, Hole 1. Our job was to burn brush, clear the sides of the road of all vegetation, to increase our field of vision. Carrying a flamethrower is hard work anywhere; in one hundred-degree heat it’s a nightmare. We continued through the day. My utilities were drenched with sweat. I was so tired I could hardly walk. When we broke for lunch, no one could eat; we just slept for an hour or so, mixed another fifty-gallon batch of napalm, and went back to it. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that I swore to myself I’d never do that again.
We were working close to sunset, trying to finish the last of the napalm when it hit me. Dusk was setting in. I gazed around in all directions, the hills to my left, the rice patties to my right; I realized my silhouette could be seen for miles -- any sniper within range could see me. It was like we were carrying flashlights in the middle of the night.
The days continued uneventfully, no enemy anywhere, just hard backbreaking work. For the next two weeks, I filled sandbags, cleared bush, and had hole watch every third night until the end of January. I also found out what the purpose of the poker game was: Money was meaningless. You could win or lose thirty, forty dollars a night and not give a shit. There was nothing to buy here anyway. There was nowhere to spend your money unless you either sent it home or were saving up for R&R. When you went broke or owed the kitty, you paid it back by taking someone else's hole watch or patrols. Hole watch went for twenty bucks a night, patrols fifty. One night I entered the game and learned the hard way. I lost so much on one progressive pot; I had hole watch all week.
It was January 26 when my name appeared on the duty roster for night patrol. Patrols, operations, anything that took you out in the bush were called a search and destroy mission. A squad of five or six led by a corporal, no radio, no communication, we were to walk out into the night and set up an ambush. The entire war was simply a series of ambushes. You would follow a trail used by small outlining villages to come to market, find a clearing, then hide in the jungle and set up. If anyone walked by, you’d open fire. During the course of the night, you would move to a second ambush site. Moving to a second spot was supposed to wake everyone up so we wouldn’t fall asleep. Of course, the Vietcong were doing the same thing. Walking to the first site, followed by trying to find the second, you opened yourself up to their ambushes. That was the game of life and death in Vietnam.
Cpl. John Hall was the squad leader. I had never met him before or anyone else in the squad for that matter. Night patrol like hole watch was simply a collection of the daily duty rosters from each of the sections that made up H&S Company. We walked to Hole 6 where we left the compound and headed across the rice patties and into the jungle. Hall had done this enough to know where all the trails started.
Just before we formed a single file, I heard him say, “Hey Rube, new guy, you take point.”
His faced twitched when he spoke, and didn’t make eye contact. My heart sank. Point meant you were all alone. You walked ten to twenty yards in front of the squad by yourself. If you did encounter a booby trap or an ambush, you were expendable. The Vietcong would ambush you first, thus leaving the remainder of the squad safe to either get cover or attack. A booby trap would kill only one person. Point was the worst job in combat. I knew sooner or later it would happen, but I never thought I’d be point on my first patrol. I didn’t know what to look for, I didn’t know the trails, I didn’t know anything. Without questioning, I would do what I was ordered. I would head out alone and the squad would follow when they thought the distance between them and myself was great enough. It wasn’t quite dark, and the farmers were beginning to leave the fields. Great, I thought to myself. If any of them were Vietcong, they would know exactly where we were going.
Cpl. Hall showed me his map before I moved out. There was only a single trail that ran for about a mile or so, and then it forked. I was to head in the direction that appeared the most traveled and continues for another half-mile or so. Then, at my discretion, I would elect a suitable ambush point. The second squad, which was also running a patrol tonight, was on the other side of the base, leaving in the opposite direction. There was no chance we’d ever meet up; that would be too deadly.
My vision was nowhere as clear as on the nights I had hole watch. I was now on unfamiliar ground moving over rolling hills with the jungle so dense, its canopy so massive that only tiny glimpses of starlight would penetrate it. The ground was heavily covered with leaves, making it extremely difficult to check for mines or booby traps. Off to each side of the trail were numerous species of ferns and red-leafed plants. Almost everywhere was a very common plant; a large bush, low to the ground, with large banana-like leafs. These large leaves hung over into the path and had to be pushed aside with my rifle barrel as I walked. Just a couple of feet off the path the real jungle started. Trees were made even thicker by the various types of clinging vines winding around their multiple trunks. The vines extended to the top of the canopy. I walked extremely slow. I could smell the musk like odor in the air, that mixture of dampness with something mystical and ancient. My eyes constantly glanced down at the ground for any traces that it might have been tampered with. Then I’d look up, starting at ankle height and moving to chest level, searching for tripping devices, anything that could set off any numerous types of booby traps -- pongee sticks pointing straight up from a leaf-hidden pit in the ground, pongee sticks tied to a young sampling held back in full tension by vines just waiting to be released, Bouncing Betties, land mines, and just about anything else the V.C. could think of. My fear was more intense than anything I’d ever known. I walked on, covering only about one hundred feet every five or six minutes. The squad behind me never said a word.
It took me almost two hours to reach the fork, but I couldn’t tell which way to go. Neither trail appeared to have been used much. I chose left, thinking it might be safer as to slightly circle back toward the base, even if this circle was over a mile from our perimeter. I continued my slow pace, being startled two or three times from noises to the left, to the right, deep inside the jungle. My instant reaction was to fire. No safety on anymore, a round fully locked in the chamber, one slight squeeze, one slight mistake and firing out of fear would give our positions away immediately. I couldn’t tell whether the noises I heard were animals sensing my presence or Vietcong following alongside waiting for their opportunity. Maybe there were no sounds and it was all in my head. My future, my life, everything I ever did, all the things still left to happen were now laid on a platter and offered to the darkness of death. We were truly at a disadvantage; the Vietcong lived in this country all their lives and we were fighting on their turf.
I saw a small clearing to my left; about three feet inside the jungle wall and thought there might be enough space to hide all five of us. It was then that I realized that no one had told me what to do next. Should I wait for the others to catch up? Should I move into the clearing and quietly signal to my squad as they approached? No -- that idea was too risky; the fear of adrenaline ran so strong in all of us that with one tiny slip and we’d shoot each other. Confused and unsure of myself, I decided to turn around and walk back to the squad in clear sight, praying my silhouette wouldn’t scare the first man and I’d wind up finding death through my companions. Fortunately, the silhouette of my helmet and uniform was recognized. I met up with them about twenty meters back. Two were in front, then Cpl. Hall, then the end man. Without ever saying a sound, my hand signals showed what I had in mind. The men followed closely. We all found spots quickly, five marines each about ten feet apart, well hidden, weapons ready, pointing toward the trail, waiting. If anything walked by, if anything was sensed to be approaching, we’d open fire followed by grenades, intending to kill any wounded before they could crawl away. You couldn’t smoke on patrol. In hole watch it was okay, but not on patrol -- a lit cigarette would be a sure giveaway. This game was just silence and waiting.
The sounds of the night became audible after we stopped moving; crackling insects were everywhere. We didn’t scratch, didn’t slap. We became one with the tiger and waited for our prey. We remained in this silence for three hours, until it was time to move on, continue for another mile or so, and find our second ambush site. I moved back and became lead man of the group. PFC Bernard Williams was now point. Being the lead man didn’t change the intense fear. I thought the V.C. were smart enough to know that we used points and would let the first man pass before attacking. We were once again the prey. I didn’t understand why we needed to set up ambushes at two sites. Why set us up to be ambushed or catch a booby trap for a second time? Wasn’t one ambush point as good as another?
We reached the second point at 0100. Williams did as I did, walked carefully back to the squad until he was recognized. Hidden this time, we were on the right side of a narrow trail, more rocks than before, and still lots of vegetation. It wasn’t hard to find concealment. In sitting positions we waited. This time Hall found a spot on the ground just behind us and dozed off, knowing the four of us could do the job. I couldn’t believe he was that lackadaisical. I gazed down at my watch every five minutes hoping an hour had gone by. Time stood still.
It started to drizzle lightly, a refreshing mist over my tired, sweaty body. Surely the Vietcong wouldn’t come out in the rain . . . well, what if someone did walk by, what if, out of fear, I missed? Too many what-ifs -- I had to stop thinking, clear my mind and wait.
It was close to 0400 when I heard a distinct sound. Something was moving a little farther up the trail. I quickly looked over my shoulders, to the left, to the right. In the darkness I could see only two other members of my squad. I couldn’t tell if they were ready; one looked asleep, the other so tired he was totally unaware of the sound I was hearing. The sound was still there -- my eyes were alert, my weapon ready. I straightened the pin on one of my grenades so it would release with only a fraction of effort. The sound of someone walking, the trampling of leaves on the ground was getting closer. My heart and soul filled with terror. The sound was almost on top of me before I saw it. Small, coming out of the dark jungle shadows was a family of monkeys enjoying an early morning stroll. Was I the only one who noticed them? The monkeys sensed our odor as something foreign and moved off the trail into the heart of the jungle, not more than three feet in front of me and only a split second before I would have blasted them into oblivion.
Now my fear was replaced with anger. I was more than annoyed with the lack of command by example that Hall displayed. I felt that his selecting me as point was nothing more than a callous attempt of throwing fresh meat to the lions. Left to my own devices to select an ambush point exemplified how little concern Hall had for this patrol or his duty as squad leader. Hall was still sleeping, and the other three might as well have been, barely awake in their positions. They were so drowsy, they wouldn’t have noticed a whole regiment of V.C. walking by. I nudged Cpl. Hall and pointed to my watch. Cpl. Hall, with neither urgency nor surprise, opened his eyes, wiped the sleep away, and slowly stood up. He lightly brushed the sand and dirt off of his utilities.
“Time to box it up. Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said.
It took him a minute or two to rise and brush the sand and leaves off his body. By then, the rest of our tired and undersized squad was standing on the trail, ready to start the hike back. The only other remaining PFC. was assigned point. This time on my own, I just fell in, right in the middle of the pack in front of Cpl. Hall. The pace picked up slightly, everyone feeling a bit more secure heading home over the same ground covered earlier. The short mile to our first checkpoint took only a fraction of the time it did on the trek out.
During the slow progression back, the anger and hostility I had for Cpl. Hall began to rise. Not only did I feel he was inadequate as a squad leader -- sleeping while on ambush and making me do point without any experience -- but it also brought out my inadequacy, and I didn’t know how to deal with that. We paused for a brief minute to guzzle down some water from our canteens when Hall tapped me on the shoulder and told me to resume point once again. So far, Cpl. Hall had slept half the night and L.Cpl. Jason Brown hadn’t done squat. Rank had its privileges but this was absurd. Suddenly, I didn’t care about the rest of the squad behind me anymore — with or without them I was alone. I started my journey back, slightly faster than going out, but not by much. Two or three times the group caught up to me and Brown signaled me to move faster.
“If you want point, take it. If not, I set the pace,” I responded, agitated.
The hike back woke everyone up a little; luckily, the evening had ended without incident. No duty would be assigned the next day, as sleeping in was allowed after patrol. For me it would mean crashing till noon followed by personal chores I hadn’t had time to deal with since arriving -- laundry, a haircut, and I wanted to get to our small PX and see what they had. I knew I needed toothpaste and shaving cream for sure. Maybe they also had books.
During my daydreaming, out of the corner of my eye I swore I saw something wink at me; it came just off to my right at the edge of the trail. I stopped in my tracks to see what for a microsecond caught my attention. In my hesitation L.Cpl Brown caught up to me and immediately screamed, “STOP! Don’t move a muscle! Hold it right there!”
It was a drop of morning dew hanging in mid-air. No, it wasn’t that, either -- it was a drop of morning dew reflecting a tiny bit of early morning light and hanging from a thin strand of monofilament line.
“It’s a booby trap,” Brown said.
Brown motioned for Cpl. Hall to come forward; he saw it also. Carefully, slowly, he followed the line to the ground and off the side of the trail into the jungle. About three feet away, hidden under leaves on the ground, was a marine-made claymore mine. Of all the mines made, the claymore is the deadliest. A small, green, curved plastic case, no more than maybe eight inches long and five inches high. But inside is housed tens of thousands of tiny BBs with enough explosive to propel those little steel balls and wipe out an entire platoon, no less a squad. We used them on operations. They were set up along with hole watch to protect our perimeter. This was one of our mines, no doubt left behind and found by the V.C.
Cpl. Hall defused it, deftly cutting the monofilament line where it connected to the electronic firing device on the side with a pocketknife. He carried it back in one of his oversized pockets on his pant legs. It was during that last leg back to the base when I realized what had just taken place. I knew two things for sure: Hall would turn in the claymore to Intelligence, just as he was supposed to, but he’d also tell them he was the one who found it; and I was right the first time -- it wasn’t the early morning light reflecting on a drop of dew. It was a wink, a wink from the face of Death, and it was toying with me, showing me it could be seen or not seen, exposing itself at any time, in any way and do it just for grins.
We entered the perimeter at the trailhead right where we started. Hole 6 yelled out loud and clear, “Who goes there?”
“It’s fucking us, and if you fire, you better not miss or I’ll kick your ass all
the way back to the mess hall!” Hall responded.
So much for the password, I thought. That was the only thing that made me smile since the night began, because I felt the exact same way. I dragged myself straight back to my bunk and collapsed. I was too tired to eat, shower, or even undress. My last thoughts just before falling asleep were of Angel. I remembered how she turned around and backed her station wagon into the drive-in. We opened the tailgate and lied on the mattress watching From Russia with Love. I remembered a passage from another Ian Flemming thriller, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which the seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho is quoted:
You only live twice,
Once when you’re born,
And once when you look death in the face.
Notes:
2 The M40A1 106mm recoilless rifle is a lightweight form of weapon that allows the firing of heavier projectile than would be practical with a recoiling weapon. Normally used for anti-tank roles, the first effective system of this kind was developed during World War II.
3 An M274A2 USMC Mule is a small four-wheel-drive vehicle that can hold either four men or have a 106mm recoilless rifle attached.
4 The men in Vietnam always believed that “Saigon Sally,” a very sexy-voiced woman, was broadcasting live from Saigon. It was later realized she was an American taping her broadcasts from California, which were sent over and played daily throughout Vietnam.
